ARTIFICIAL intelligence (AI) has become one of the defining conversations of our time. Much of the public debate has understandably revolved around jobs, regulation, privacy, and technological innovation. Yet Pope Leo XIV’s new encyclical “Magnifica Humanitas” (Magnificent Humanity) invites us to look elsewhere. Rather than asking first what AI can do, Pope Leo asks what kind of humanity we are becoming.
For those of us who study language, this question immediately raises another. If AI is fundamentally a technology of language, then what happens to human communication when machines become increasingly capable of speaking, writing, translating, persuading, and even appearing
We are living through one of the greatest transformations in communication since the invention of the printing press. Every day, millions of people now encounter language not written by another human being. Emails, news summaries, advertisements, classroom materials, customer service interactions, research assistance, and even personal conversations are increasingly mediated by AI. AI has become less a technology we use than a language environment we inhabit.
This is why Pope Leo’s use of the Tower of Babel is particularly striking. The biblical story is often interpreted as one about linguistic diversity, but the encyclical reminds us that its deeper lesson concerns communication itself. Babel was built with “a single language, a single technology, a single direction.” The problem was not technological achievement. Rather, communication became detached from humility, solidarity, and the common good.
The parallels with our own age are difficult to ignore. AI is making communication faster than ever before. It can generate essays in seconds, summarize books instantly, translate hundreds of languages, and produce endless streams of digital content. Yet faster communication does not necessarily mean better communication. The ability to generate language is not the same as the ability to understand another person.
Indeed, one of the greatest risks posed by AI is that we begin to mistake fluency for wisdom.
Large language models are remarkably convincing because they produce coherent, grammatically sophisticated text. But language has never simply been about producing sentences. Language is how people negotiate relationships, express identities, build communities, preserve memories, and imagine shared futures. Communication is ultimately social before it is technological.
As a sociolinguist, I find this distinction increasingly important. Languages are never merely systems of grammar. They embody histories, cultures, inequalities, and aspirations. Every language carries a unique way of understanding the world. Every dialect represents a community’s lived experience. Every multilingual speaker navigates identities that cannot simply be reduced to data.
Yet AI systems inevitably privilege some languages and varieties over others. They are trained disproportionately on dominant languages and digital content produced by those with greater technological access. This raises important questions about linguistic justice. Whose voices become more visible? Whose ways of speaking become the digital norm? And whose languages risk becoming increasingly invisible?
For multilingual societies like the Philippines, these questions deserve far greater attention than they currently receive. Fortunately, Pope Leo does not approach AI with either technological optimism or fear. Instead, he calls for discernment. Technology, he reminds us, is never neutral because it inevitably reflects the intentions and values of those who create and govern it. AI can educate, connect, and improve human life, but it can also deepen inequalities, distort public discourse, and weaken genuine human encounter.
This is why the encyclical’s emphasis on dialogue is so significant. Throughout the document, Pope Leo repeatedly returns to listening, plurality, participation, and communion. These are not simply theological ideals. They are communicative virtues. Healthy societies depend not merely on information but on conversations in which people genuinely hear one another. Perhaps this is the lesson educators, journalists, linguists and communication scholars should take most seriously.
The future challenge is not that AI will replace language. Rather, it is that humans may gradually surrender the habits that make communication authentically human: careful listening, critical reflection, empathy, humility and responsibility for our words.
Machines can generate language, but they cannot assume moral responsibility for what language does. They cannot genuinely forgive, reconcile, comfort, or love. Those remain profoundly human acts.
Near the end of “Magnifica Humanitas,” Pope Leo urges us to become “builders of communion, rather than architects of Babel.” It is a fitting conclusion not only for Christians but for everyone navigating the age of AI. Ultimately, AI is not only transforming technology. It is transforming communication. And if language remains humanity’s greatest instrument for building trust, solidarity and understanding, then safeguarding human communication may well become one of the most important ethical responsibilities of the AI age.
Ariane Macalinga Borlongan is a public intellectual, language scholar, and migrant advocate. He is a leading researcher on English in the Philippines and one of the pioneers of migration linguistics. He is the youngest to earn a doctorate in linguistics, at age 23, from De La Salle University, and has had several teaching and research positions in Germany, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Poland, and Singapore. He is currently an associate professor of sociolinguistics at the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies.